June Currentlies

OK, this is a bit earlier than I usually do this. But, as tends to happen after I spend a whole month posting here in April, I mostly sort of disappeared in May. So I figured it was time to put in an appearance.

Current clothes: Blue denim shorts. A dark gray t-shirt that says "Please Go Away. I'm Reading." White ankle socks.

Current mood: Mostly OK. A little low-energy. It's warm, and my swamp cooler isn't working, and I think it's making me slightly wilty. Also my brain is now suddenly trying to worry about stupid things. Or possibly not-stupid things. Not knowing whether the things I'm worrying about are stupid or not is one of the things I worry about.

Current music: Nothing, really.

Current annoyance: There are so many things I have to arrange and make happen, and my work schedule does not make it easy. I still need to get my sewer pipe replaced, and that really needs to happen pretty soon. And now I need to get my swamp cooler fixed, too. I need to pick up my new glasses in Albuquerque, since I have to go there for glasses now that the eye doctor in town retired. I also need to go to the dentist. (Which is the thing I've been worrying about, because there's this lump on my jaw over where I had the root canal. It's been there for quite a while, I think, and it doesn't hurt, but I just noticed how disturbingly big it is and it's probably nothing, but of course now my brain is all, "OMG, if it's not some horrible abscess that is going to make me lose the tooth, it's probably jaw cancer!" Shut up, brain. But I am due for an exam and a cleaning, and I should have it looked at.) Oh, and I need to arrange to take my car in for repairs, because somebody scraped up against it in the Walmart parking lot the other day. It's only got minor damage, and because it was unambiguously not my fault I don't even have to pay the deductible, but it is going to mean having to get it into a body shop, probably in Albuquerque. And I do not know when I'm going to get all this crap done, especially as I'm on night shifts next week, and nothing happens during the day when I'm on night shifts.

Current thing: Based on the above, I'm going to say having too damned much to do and not getting it done.

Current desktop picture: This great image of Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. I am going to miss him so much. Even if that last episode wasn't actually very good.

Current book: I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined) by Chuck Klosterman. I'm not very far into it, but so far I'm liking it.

Current song in head: Nothing much at the moment. I know, so boring.

Current refreshment: Lemon-ginger tea.

Current DVD in player: I just finished season one of Sons of Anarchy. And I'm surprised my how much I enjoyed it. Man, if somebody had just told me this was basically Biker Hamlet, I would have started watching it years ago.

Current happy thing: I'm not working today! That's always good.

Current thought: Real Life is annoying. I just want to go read some more.

May Currentlies

See, I didn't disappear forever at the end of April. I am back to do this thing again!

Current clothes: Blue jeans and a brown t-shirt with a picture of a very groggy-looking owl holding a cup of coffee, which will probably be an accurate depiction of me come the morning, since I'm starting a week of night shifts tonight.

Current mood: OK. Slightly out of it in that way I sometimes am when I'm starting nights and have tried to make myself sleep too long.

Current music: Nothing much. I'm back to trying to catch up on podcasts again.

Current annoyance: The jeans I'm wearing feel a little snug. This is annoying. There is entirely too much of me filling up my jeans already.

Current thing: Well, I'm still having a fair amount of success with the "one in, two out" TBR management scheme. I am a couple of books ahead on the "in" entries, admittedly, but I should be able to make that up soon.

Current desktop picture: Still this. But I should check and see if the BBC has any wallpaper of the current Doctor and companion. I really want to spent some time looking at them before they're gone.

Current book: Just finished When the People Fell by Cordwainer Smith, I'm now about to start The End or Something Like That by Ann Dee Ellis.

Current song in head: "First of May" by Jonathan Coulton. Which has been stuck in there since at least the first of May.

Current refreshment: Nothing, but I'm really, really hungry. I need to go and eat lunch, or dinner, or whatever you call it when I eat pizza at 4:30 PM when I'm on night shifts.

Current DVD in player: Most recently, Arrival. Which made no scientific sense, but otherwise wasn't bad.

Current happy thing: I had a really great weekend, at least by my own introvert standards. Watched a couple of movies and some great TV, did a little reading, took some walks, played some computer games, got a bunch of things done in ways that made me feel like I was really accomplishing something... What more could one ask for?

Current thought: Sooooooo huuuuuuuungry.

The End (Of The Month) Is Nigh.

Well, here we are! The last day of April, and, thus, the last day of my daily blogging exercise for at least another year. Possibly longer, if I finally decide I've gotten tired of it. Which I might. I dunno. I can never quite decide whether it feels entirely worthwhile or not.

One thing that is interesting about it is how, come the last week or two, every time I had to sit down and write a new blog post, I found myself thinking, "Geez, it seems like I've been doing this for ages. Isn't April over yet?", even while other parts of my brain thought the time was just flying by and couldn't believe we were this far into April already, given how little I seemed to have accomplished so far this year.

Humans' relationship to time is just weird. Or at least mine is. Which is something that's becoming more and more noticeable the older I get.

Anyway. Yeah. So, long April, and so long, Blogs-a-Lot April! And I'll see you all, uh... sometime later.

Go, Endurance Readers!

So, today is the day of Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon, an internet-based challenge in which, as the name implies, participants read for 24 hours straight. Every time this comes to my attention, I think, oh, it would be really cool to do that sometime. And every time it actually happens, either I've forgotten all about it, or my work schedule doesn't remotely permit such shenanigans.

This time out, it actually would have worked with my work schedule, but, alas, I'm still not doing it. Partly because I didn't want to get up a 6 AM, but mostly, I think, because I only realized it was this weekend a couple of days ago. If I'd had more time to psyche myself up, and to stock up on snacks, well, maybe.

As it is, though, I think perhaps I will engage in a show of solidarity by spending a good-sized chunk of today sitting around and reading. It's the least I can do, right?

WTF, Weather?

It's snowing today in a surprising number of places here in New Mexico, and it's supposed to get down into the 30s tonight where I am, and even lower tomorrow night. At the end of freaking April! This is because I was extra proactive this year and got my swamp cooler up and running a week or two earlier than I usually do, isn't it? The Weather Gods are clearly punishing me for my arrogance. Guess I'd better turn my wall heater back on...

(Seriously, though. By the end of the first week in May, it's usually unambiguously summer here, and already getting freaking hot. Why is there snow?!)

Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right, But Two Wrights Make An Airplane.

Speaking of books, I'm now reading a biography of the Wright Brothers, and I'm enjoying it well enough. But I can't help thinking that maybe there need to be more biographies of dumb losers who never do all that much with their lives, because reading about hyper-competent history-making people only brings home to me the fact that I am not someone who ever would have been capable of inventing an airplane.

I Sort Of Love How Ridiculously Low-Tech This Is.

My attempt at the "two out, one in" method of controlling my TBR shelves seems to be going pretty well so far. Those book subscription services I signed up for aren't helping, but avoiding the library sales definitely is. Here's what the book log I've been keeping looks like right now:



Although possibly the only thing to really be concluded from that is that I have books with odd and interesting titles.

More TV

I just watched the second episode of Class. And if I had somewhat mixed feelings about the first one, I enjoyed this one much more thoroughly, mainly for the characters and the sense of humor. Although I am more than a little surprised by its positively Torchwoodian levels of gore.

As for the most recent episode of Doctor Who, my opinion of it is much the same as it was of the last one: the plot's not much, but the character stuff is fantastic, and the new companion is an utter delight.

Well, Really, There Had To Be At Least One Post This Month Complaining About My Sleep/Work Schedule

Yeah, I got nothin' today. I'm switching from a weekend of night shifts back onto days (briefly), I've had less than five hours of sleep, my circadian rhythms are screwed up, and there is not enough coffee in the entire world. Man, the older I get the more I find myself thinking that there may be a limit to how long I can do this rotating shifts thing. At least on the crappy, short-handed schedule that's now our permanent status quo. Bah.

Yeah, Science!

Of course, April 22 was not just Earth Day, it was also the day of the March for Science. I gather there were some activities going on for this where I live, and I have to say, even that though I am chronic non-joiner and find it extremely difficult to get off my butt even for things I strongly believe in, marching for science is something I might have made an exception for if I weren't working today. (You know, doing science.) As it is, in a vague gesture of solidarity, I wore my shirt with the Neil DeGrasse Tyson quote: "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."

CNN has some pictures of amusing sciencey signs. I particularly like the one that says, "What do we want? Evidence based research! When do we want it? After peer review."

It's Where I Keep All My Stuff

Happy Earth Day! Remember, it is extremely important to take proper care of the Earth, as the relocation costs are entirely prohibitive.

Operation Don't Get Killed By My Airbag Is A Go!

Today's fun activity: getting the airbag inflator on my car replaced. I went online and looked up some information on the recall, and it turns out to be huge, and has even been called "the largest and most complex safety recall in U.S. history," with more and more cars being added to the list over the last few years, and the company that makes the airbags possibly paying as much as $1 billion in penalties. Well, I guess that's what happens when your safety equipment occasionally impales people in the face...

Why Are There So Many Crappy Planets?

Today's random link: Seedship, a simple but strangely addictive text-based game in which you play a starship AI tasked with finding a new colony world for the last cryogenically frozen remnants of humanity. I finally founded a colony that not only survived, but developed into an enlightened utopia on the eighth try, then decided to quit while I was ahead.

What Betty's Watching, Part Whatever

Today has been a badly needed rest day. I slept in, spent some time reading on the couch, took a walk, ordered a pizza, and watched some television. Bliss!

But it leaves me without much to talk about today. Except television. So, some comments on things I've been watching lately:

Class: I did watch the first episode! It feels, well, maybe a little too obviously aimed at teenagers for my own middle-aged tastes. To be honest, I can probably count the number of TV shows set in high schools that I've ever really enjoyed on two fingers. But it was pleasant enough, and while the first episode feels like a lot of setting things up, what it's setting up is potentially interesting, so I'm tentatively looking forward to the rest of it, and to seeing how it all shakes out. I'm not sure, though, whether it's a good sign or a bad sign that my interest levels in the first ep skyrocketed the minute the Doctor showed up.

Better Call Saul: The spinoff that seems like it should never have worked continues to work wonderfully well, but maybe that really shouldn't be much of a surprise given the sheer amount of raw talent both in front of and behind the cameras. Although possibly even more entertaining to me than the show itself is a comment Vince Gilligan made on Chris Hardwick's show after the season premiere. When asked about filming in the hot New Mexico sun, he said that New Mexico is like that original Star Trek episode with the space hippies: it's really beautiful, but then you realize everything is trying to kill you. I must say, of all the Star Trek episodes to find myself living in, I had not expected "The Way to Eden!"

Samurai Jack: I had forgotten how amazing this show was until it suddenly and belatedly came back. The revived version definitely has a bit of a different feel to it, but it's kept the same stylistic brilliance.

Once Upon a Time: Still the show I am most embarrassed to love unequivocally (if not unreservedly). I've heard rumors of possible major cast shake-ups, though, and perhaps a revamping of the show to accommodate those, and the way things are currently going in the storyline seems like it might be entirely consistent with something like that. I... am dubious about whether such a thing would even remotely work, but I guess we'll see. Maybe.

The Expanse: I never read the books this was based on, and I'm thinking now that was an oversight, as I'm really liking the series. It started off slow, but it's definitely holding my interest now. Although I do think it's one of those shows that may be better binge-watched, as the plot is pretty intricate, and I do keep finding myself forgetting important details from week to week. And it's interesting... I can think of very few space TV shows that are strictly solar system-based like this, and it may well be the very first genuinely hard SF TV show ever. But this is a subgenre that seems to be having a surprising pop cultural moment. A friend of mine suggested, when I brought this subject up, that that may have a lot to do with the fact it's much more feasible to do special effects involving zero-g and such than it was in the past, and I imagine that does account for a lot of it. But probably not all of it. It certainly doesn't account for the startling mainstream success of The Martian before it was ever adapted to film, for instance.

I may be watching other things, too, but if I am, they're either on hiatus right now, or have slipped my mind entirely. That's probably more than enough, though. Too much actually interesting stuff on TV is cutting way into my ability to work my way through the Netflix queue.

I'm Sure He Would Have Very Much Enjoyed Sniffing Them, Too.

The vets sent flowers. I'm really rather touched. I almost want to cry again. But in a good kind of way.

Belated Easter Well-Wishes

I hope all of you out there who celebrate Easter had a good one. I don't much, which is probably just as well, considering I had to work all day. I did eat entirely too many of those malted milk eggs with the chocolate candy coatings, though. They are stupidly yummy.

The Doctor Is In!

My non-spoilery reactions to last night's Doctor Who season premiere:

There wasn't much to the plot, really, but I don't particularly care. I enjoyed it a lot. I'm very much liking the new companion so far, and I am intrigued by what looks like some very interesting setup for episodes to come. I also may have made some undignified noises at certain classic series continuity nods.

But mostly, Peter Capaldi is still great, and I still do not want him to leave.

RiffTrax Who

Speaking of Doctor Who, I am definitely going to go see this in August:

Whoo Who!

Tomorrow we finally start the new season of Doctor Who, after a long dry spell punctuated only by one special episode at Christmas. I'm excited for it, but also a little sad, since this will be the last season of Peter Capaldi's stint on the show, and I'm not remotely ready for him to leave yet. Hell, I've only just finally gotten over losing Matt Smith! This is a side effect of the life-speeds-up-as-you-get-older effect that I had not anticipated and do not like: at some point, all your Doctors seem to last barely an eyeblink.

Tomorrow is also the US premiere of the Who spinoff Class, which I've been looking forward to for quite a while. The timing of that is annoyingly bad for me, though, as I'm working all weekend, and while I'm going to try very hard to make time between my 12-hour shifts to watch Who, I'm probably not going to be able to get to Class until Monday. (My work schedule is irritating in many, many ways, but some days the worst of them seems to be how much it interferes with my very important TV-watching schedule.)

Well, to tide us all over until then, here's a trailer for the new Who season, for anybody who hasn't seen it:



Tell me that doesn't look exciting!

New Normal

I can't deny that, in a lot of ways, having only one cat is a heck of a lot easier. I can get up in the morning (or, depending on my shift, the afternoon), dump some food in Vir's bowl, and then just walk away. No need to stand there between two cats while they eat, thwarting their constant attempts to steal each other's vet-prescribed food. No more claws-out scuffles over who gets to sit on top of me when I'm sprawled on the couch reading or watching TV.

But it's also rather melancholy, of course. I suspect it's going to be a while before I stop thinking I hear a noise and turning around to see if it's Nova about to jump up on my computer desk, or feeling a pang when I put an empty cereal bowl into the sink instead of onto the floor for him to lick.

Up And Away

On a happier note, I will point out that today is the 56th anniversary of the first human spaceflight.

Way to go, Yuri Gagarin!

I Knew This Was Coming Soon. I Really Did. Still Very Sad, Though.

So. Yeah. The cat news is bad.

There's still masses of stuff in his bowels preventing him from being able to defecate properly. The vet hasn't been able to get the rest of it out at all. He says at this point, he could put the cat under general anesthetic in order to be able to get at it and get it out, but...

But, well. That'd clear him out for now, but it's very, very likely the problem would come back again, maybe in a week, maybe in a month, and it would probably keep coming back.

And... Nova is about two months shy of eighteen. He has lost so much weight that he is down to nothing but skin, bones, and fur. He seems to have lost a lot of his hearing. His back legs, which have been growing stiffer and weaker gradually over the past couple of years, have gotten noticeably worse lately, shaking and faltering under him as he strains to evacuate. And none of that is going to get better. Up until now, he's been deteriorating slowly, but has still been able to enjoy the pleasures of his life. (Which mostly consist of insisting on sitting on my lap while I'm at my computer desk until my legs go numb, or licking I Can't Believe It's Not Butter off the knife I've just used on my toast. (I don't know whether he believes it's not butter or not, but he loves that stuff.))

But at some point, though, there's discomfort and pain than pleasure left, and I fear we've reached that point. I don't want to put him through any more of it.

So, yeah. I'm going in to the vet in an hour or so, and I'm going to say goodbye. I was going to post this afterward, but I'm not sure I'm going to be up to it. I definitely don't think I could type the above stuff as easily in the past tense. And I need something to do until it's time. So, here we are.

Nova's been a good kitty. He's a sweet, beautiful, ridiculous kitty. And he's had a very good run, from that day in 1999 when my next-door neighbor knocked on my door and held out a tiny, sickly, bedraggled little kitten in one hand and said "I found this in your yard. Is it yours?" I looked down at him that day and said, "Well, I guess he is now." We've had a pretty good time together since then, I like to think. I like to think I've mostly done right by him.

I'm gonna miss him lots.

Poor Old Cat

And Nova is back at the vet. Getting another enema.

This... is not looking good for him, poor kitty.

Books On TV (Although Not Necessarily On Mine)

This trailer for American Gods looks amazing:



And the trailer for The Handmaid's Tale looks depressing and terrifying (so, probably pretty true to the source material):



Annoyingly, though, both of these are going to be showing on channels/services that I don't have, and which I am not going to run out and subscribe to. (Sigh. Perhaps it was inevitable that the new Golden Age of Television would also be the new Age of Not Being Able to Watch the Things You Want to Watch Unless You Subscribe to at Least Half A Dozen Separate Services. But that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.) Anyway, I will look forward to seeing both of them if and when they're actually available to me.

April Currentlies

Well, time for this now, I guess.

Current clothes: I'm on night shifts, so it's still morning for me, and I haven't showered and dressed yet. Which means I'm currently wearing black-and-white plaid pajama pants, a gray pocket t-shirt, and bear paw slippers.

Current mood: More or less okay, I guess? Various kinds of anxiety have been trying to invade my brain after a really lovely period without them, but I've been fending them off with at least some small degree of success.

Current music: "I'm Reading a Book" by Julian Smith, because sometimes you just have to play your theme song.

Current annoyance: Shitty kitty butt. (Although I think he's finally getting better on that score. I'm a little worried he might still be having some trouble peeing, though, so he may be going back to the vet on Monday.) Also, you know what my very favorite thing is after I've worked a full week of night shifts? Immediately following them up with more and longer night shifts! Followed by just barely enough time to sleep-deprive myself into a change of schedule before having to show up for work at 8 AM. Yeah, that's a blast!

Current thing: Needing a vacation, I think.

Current desktop picture: Still this.

Current book: Places No One Knows by Brenna Yovanoff, a YA novel I'm liking way, way better than I expected to.

Current song in head: Various things have been floating around in the ol' brain. For much of yesterday it was "Something to It" by Great Big Sea. Or parts of it, anyway.

Current refreshment: Orange spice tea.

Current DVD in player: Disk 2 of Life's Too Short, a show in which Warwick Davis plays a jerky loser version of himself. (Which is definitely acting; I've read his autobiography, and he seems like a lovely person.) He's frequently joined by other well-known actors playing similar self-mocking versions of themselves. It's one of those odd British comedies that's often funny, but even more often uncomfortably embarrassing. I'm not sure I quite understand those, to be honest. I think it's a cultural thing.

Current happy thing: Well, less cat diarrhea is good. I hope.

Current thought: Did I mention needing a vacation? I think I probably need a vacation. Or at least a staycation, which is all I could manage at the moment, anyway.

Total Recall

I just got a recall notice on my car. Apparently there is a small but non-zero chance my airbag could kill me, which I think we can all agree would be non-ideal. But, sigh, that's one more annoying thing on my to-do list, since I'm going to have find time to drive up to Albuquerque to get it fixed. And somehow all I can think is, how ironic would it be if I got into an accident and was killed by my airbag on my way to fix my airbag? Does that qualify as genuine irony? I think it does. Being killed by your safety equipment definitely does. So, yeah, I'll try and avoid that. Interesting as they can be to read about, I think an ironic death would just be embarrassing.

All It Takes Is One Step Forward And Two Steps Back! That's Usually Easy.

In non-cat feces related news, I've decided I'm going to give this method of reducing one's TBR pile a shot. It looks so simple, so easy, so mathematically inevitable! How can it possibly fail? Well, knowing me and my slightly worrying book-buying habits, probably fairly easily. But I'm trying it, anyway. I really don't want to face the shame of my unread books total hitting quadruple digits.

The Joys Of Pet Ownership

Well, Nova is back from the vet. They ended up keeping him two days and letting him go this morning, saying he seemed to be doing better.

But, oh, man. You know, when I picked him up this morning, I thought he smelled kind of bad, but I was half asleep, having just worked all night on too little sleep, so, after making sure he'd had something to eat, I just staggered into bed. This morning, I got up and realized he didn't just smell bad, he smelled really bad. The treatments they gave him to get his bowels running again clearly did something, because his entire back end was covered in crap. It was awful. It was so bad that when I tried to feed them, before I realized what the problem was, Vir just hissed and refused to stay in the room with him.

And now my entire house smells like cat crap. Especially the sofa and the spots on the carpet where he likes to sit. Except, of course, for the part of the house that smells like the bleach I used to clean the tub with after I washed him off. Which, needless to say, he did not like any more than I did.

It's a good think I like these animals, that's all I have to say.

Poor Kitty

So, I did get Nova in to the vet this afternoon. (Or yesterday afternoon, maybe. Since it's past midnight now, and thus time for another post.) Poor thing. He isn't just backed up, he's very backed up, and he has a urinary infection. Which he quite handily provided a diagnosis for, as he peed on the scale a little when they went to weigh him, and the veterinary assistant immediately looked at it and went, "Oh, there's blood in the urine!" (Which I wouldn't have been able to tell, myself. It was slightly discolored, but not noticeably red.)

Anyway, they're keeping him overnight, at least, and will give him antibiotics, and an enema, and some fluids. Poor baby. With luck, he'll be looking up a little in the morning, and I'll be able to take him home when I get off work. But we'll see. He's so old, and in such poor shape generally, that it always seems possible to me that any blow to his health might end up being the one that knocks him out for good. Which... well, it worries me, but given that I'm honestly surprised he's made it this far, my feeling about such a possibility is more resignation than fear. And he's in good hands for the moment, at least.

I Did Not Starve!

So, what else am I doing besides fretting over a constipated cat?

Well, my big accomplishment for the month so far is actually completing a level of Adventure Mode in Don't Starve.

Don't Starve is a computer game in which you're deposited on some freaky island by a demon (apparently) and challenged to, well, not starve. And not get killed by monsters, and not freeze to death, and not die in a fire, and... Well, you get the idea. It's a pretty challenging game, especially at first. And it's ideal for situations like last night, when I wanted to stay up as late as possible to switch onto night shifts. I mean, you know how games like that go. You get too busy concentrating on them to notice you're tired, and next thing you know it's 4:30 AM.

Anyway. The game has two modes: regular survival and Adventure Mode. In the regular mode, you just hang out on your island surviving as long as you possibly can, until you die or get bored and quit. In Adventure Mode, you're presented with a series of different worlds with special challenges, and you have to get through all of them to win. They're not easy, and I'm in the position right now where, after many hours of late-night gameplay, I'm good enough at the game for regular mode to get a bit boring, but not remotely good enough for Adventure Mode not to kick my ass. Repeatedly. Except last night, after many trials and tribulations, I finally completed the first Adventure Mode world! My poor little character is a bit battered and bruised, and perhaps not entirely sane, but he made it! Of course, there's a very good chance he's going to die immediately on World 2, but by the time I got there, it was actually my bedtime, even with my night shift schedule. So we'll see.

Hey, take your accomplishments where you can get them, right?

It's Possible This May Be A Long Month.

See, the problem with blogging every day is that if I come here and tell you about what's in my mind, you get to hear about my cat's constipation.

Because poor Nova kitty is all blocked up again. I've been seeing him straining in the litterbox, which is not good, and straining outside the litterbox, which is even more not good. But no poop emerges. Poor thing is poopless. Or, rather, he is too poop-full. I've been giving him laxatives, and am taking him to the vet tomorrow.

Gosh, what an exciting life I have.

Actually Posting On This Thing (No Joke!)

Yeah, I know, I've, if not exactly abandoned this blog lately, then at least severely neglected it, pretty much just checking in with the usual "currently" meme thing once a month. Well, now is the time to change that, at least for a little while, as I continue the tradition of Blogs-a-Lot April, in which I make a point of posting something every day for the month of April, before lapsing back into apathetic silence again. Or something like that. Stay tuned for... actually, I have no idea for what. Me talking about my cats and TV shows and complaining a lot about my work schedule, probably.

March Currentlies

Oh, dear. I appear to have descended into only checking in here once a month. Well, at least I'm here now, right? Let's do this thing again.

Current clothes: Blue jeans. White socks. A light blue t-shirt that says "READ," but the letters are all made of of images of cool things you can read about. Because I am a bookwormy dork, and I own it.

Current mood: Pretty good, actually.

Current music: Nothing much. Once again, my listening time is mostly going towards trying to catch up with podcasts, and failing miserably.

Current annoyance: I've got a lot of things I really need to get done soon, and too many of them are annoying to schedule, or involve complicated logistics I have to work out somehow.

Current thing: I did get a couple of major items crossed off my to-do list over the weekend. That seems like a pretty good thing. Otherwise, my thing continues to be retreating from reality as much as possible.

Current desktop picture: Still this.

Current book: Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave. Which doesn't really seem much like my kind of book. I didn't pick it out; it came in a book-related Quarterly subscription box. (Um, possibly one of my things lately also involves signing up for services that send me surprise books.) But I'm always looking to expand my ideas of what "my kind of book" is, so I'm giving it a shot. So far, I'm definitely not having the "Hey, I like this better than I expected!" reaction I'm hoping for, but I'm not very far in yet. So we'll see.

Current song in head: It appears to be alternating back and forth between "Domino Dancing" by the Pet Shop Boys and "Counting Stars" by OneRepublic. Do not ask me why.

Current refreshment: Nothing. But I am a little thirsty. I should hydrate.

Current DVD in player: Still Cowboy Bebop. I keep getting distracted from it.

Current happy thing: We are now firmly in the too-brief Goldilocks period between the dominant seasons of Too Hot and Too Cold. It's great weather to get out and go for a walk.

Current thought: Right, I've got a few hours before work. Time to take a walk, cross a couple of minor things off the to-do list, get some lunch, and then maybe stare mindlessly at some YouTube videos for a while. Yep, that's my day all planned out!

February Currentlies

Current clothes: Blue jeans. A t-shirt that says, "Science: It's Gotten Us This Far." Because it has. Also science-themed socks with little test tubes and representations of atoms and stuff on them, because if you're going to dress for science, you might as well commit to it.

Current mood: Mostly OK, but with a faint thread of vague irritation underneath it. This is actually pretty common when I'm on night shifts. I think maybe some part of my brain just gets really annoyed at me and/or the world for keeping it from sleeping normal hours.

Current music: Nothing in particular.

Current annoyance: My sinuses. Still. My sinuses have been annoying me since freaking November. I keep feeling like maybe it's starting to get better, but I suspect that may just be wishful thinking.

Current thing: Retreating into fun escapism a lot, I think. Because sometimes you have to.

Current desktop picture: Still this bookish one.

Current book: Just started Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell.

Current song in head: "Little Tin God" by Don Henley. The relevance of which I will leave as an exercise for the reader.

Current refreshment: Nothing. But I should drink something. I feel a little dehydrated.

Current DVD in player: Disc 2 of the complete series of Cowboy Bebop, the classic space noir anime featuring Spike Spiegel, the only bounty hunter in the universe worse than Stephanie Plum. (Admittedly, he's got much better moves. But a far worse capture record.) I've actually seen some or all of this show before, ages and ages ago, but I didn't remember it very well. On re-watch, I can kind of see why the details didn't really stick in my mind. There's a lot more style than substance to it. But it's a pretty cool style.

Current happy thing: Suddenly, winter appears to be over! Because it's February, a notoriously unpredictable month here, I don't exactly trust it, but I'll take this weather for as long as it lasts. (Although it is a pity that I'm not awake during the daylight hours this week to enjoy it.)

Current thought: Um... No matter where you go, there you are?

Nooooo! Don't Leave Me!!!!

Peter Capaldi announces he will stand down as Doctor Who at the end of the year.

This is not the feel-good news I needed right now, BBC!

And Here I Feel Good About Myself If I Manage To Get All The Laundry Done.

One of the cool things about working where I do is that, once in a while, they'll get some really interesting people in as speakers. So I just got to hear a talk by Story Musgrave. Who I always knew was very accomplished, but it turns out that doesn't even begin to cover it. This guy is amazing. He's a farmboy turned astronaut/mathematician/engineer/pilot/mechanic/brain surgeon/about a zillion other impressive things. If you wrote a novel about him, people would complain it broke their suspension of disbelief. He's basically a real-life version of Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap. Only weirder.

Glad I got the chance to attend that.

First Currentlies of 2017

I'm gonna do this while I'm thinking of it, so that I don't have the add "belated" to the post title yet again.

Current clothes: Blue jeans. Bluish-green sweater. White socks.

Current mood: Mostly okay, but... I dunno. I'm tired of things. I'm tired of winter. I'm tired of night shifts. I'm tired of the low-level but relentless nastiness that's been camped out in my sinuses for the last two months. I'm tired of not living in a Star Trek utopia.

Current music: Most recently, Determination, a rockin' collection of covers from the Undertale soundtrack by RichaadEB//Ace Waters.

Current annoyance: See above for a list of things I am tired of. I was going to say that it's not an exhaustive list, but, really, I think the last point probably covers just about everything.

Current thing: I've been wasting ridiculous amounts of time lately watching YouTube videos of people playing random videogames, for reasons I don't remotely understand. I think I'm finally starting to get over it, but, then, I've thought that before and somehow kept right on doing it.

Current desktop picture: Still this one.

Current book: The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman. Which I am enjoying. It seems to be exactly the right kind of immersive reading experience my brain needed about now.

Current song in head: Earlier it was "Auld Lang Syne." Um... Way to be late to the party, brain.

Current refreshment: Water. Gotta keep those sinuses hydrated.

Current DVD in player: Just finished season 6 of Game of Thrones. Which I thought started out kind of slow, but ended strong. It's definitely left me wanting more. Although, knowing how this usually goes, by the time I'm able to watch season 7, I'll probably have forgotten half of what happened in season 6, as well as most of the minor characters' names (again). I'll probably also have been at least partially spoiled for two or three significant plot points. Seriously, what is it about this show that sends spoiler etiquette right out the window like [season 1 spoiler redacted]?

Current happy thing: My reading for 2017 has started out well, in terms of quality if not necessarily quantity, and I'm feeling weirdly optimistic about the possibility of actually making some progress through the TBR shelves this year.

Current thought: Well, we're past the winter solstice. Eventually the sun won't be going down just as I'm getting up when I'm on night shifts anymore. That'll be something to look forward to.

2016: My Year In Books

Well, here we are, all crossed over into the new year and still hurtling forward in time at the dizzying rate of one second per second.

As I alluded to last time, at this point I traditionally like to take a look back at the previous year's worth of reading. I read 146 books last year in total (although a few of those were re-reads), which is respectable number, but one that's pretty much in line with the last few years. We, uh, won't discuss how many books I now have on the To Be Read shelves. Let's just say that if I'm making any bookish New Year's resolutions, one of them ought to be trying to keep that number from hitting quadruple digits. Um.

If you're interested, you can see the complete list of what I read this year here, or, if you prefer a pretty parade of covers, here.

As usual, I have a list of the best books I read this year. Or, rather, the books I rated 5 or 4.5 stars out of 5 after I read them, which is the only way I can compile a list like this without going completely nuts with indecision about it. Although, even so, I can't help feeling that I'd like to add Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky as an honorable mention, despite the fact that, for reasons that made sense to me that the time, I only rated it four stars. Because that's one that's really sticking with me.

Anyway. The Strugatskys aside, here's the Best-Of list for the year:

Fiction

The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
City of Stairs and City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett
The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather and Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey
Don't Breathe a Word by Jennifer McMahon
Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro
Railsea by China Miéville
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Non-fiction and Humor

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Adulthood is a Myth: A Sarah's Scribbles Collection by Sarah Andersen
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words by Randall Munroe
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap by Wendy Welch
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi


Which is a pretty substantial and nicely varied list, and a bigger one that I might have expected it to be. So, whatever else one might say about 2016, at least it was a good reading year for me. Which, of course, is what's really important.

Anyway. Happy New Year to all of you! And may you also have a great year of reading, or of whatever else it is that brings you joy.

Now, if you'll excuse me, my first book of 2017 may be calling my name...

Bye, 2016! Don't Let The Door Hit You In The Ass On The Way Out.

So, here we are. In my time zone, at least, we're less than 24 hours from the end of 2016.

And, man... You know, every year, it seems like there is a chorus of voices bemoaning all the terrible things that have happened in the last 365 days and suggesting that it's been a much worse year than most. I'm usually pretty dismissive of that. After all, every year has its share of deaths and bad news, and those things tend to loom larger in our minds than the events of past years only because they're more recent.

But 2016, it seems to me, really has been a giant tire fire of a year. It just kept burning and burning, and the longer it went on, the more noxious fumes it poured out onto all of us. I would like to say that I'm relieved it's almost over and that I'm anticipating much better things in 2017, but, of course, the truth is that 2017 will be shaped by the choices we made in 2016, and I'm not feeling too optimistic about those. Well. Here's hoping that it'll exceed expectations, eh?

In my own personal life, I suppose 2016 is memorable mostly as the year I finally got my driveway resurfaced, so I guess there's that. And one genuinely good surprise this year is that my beloved elderly cat Nova is still here with me at the end of it. He's down to skin and bones and very much showing his age, and to be honest I hardly expected him to make it to his 17th birthday -- round about June -- never mind still being here on New Year's Eve. But here he is, still getting around OK, still happily scarfing down bowls of that super-expensive prescription cat food, and still sitting on my lap and purring. That, at least, is one thing that does make me feel warm and glad at the end of this year. I think I will take it.

And I guess that's it for me for 2016! See you all next year, when I'll be back to do the usual roundup of my year's worth of reading, if nothing else.

Tis The Season

Is it Christmastime again? Man, the years really are just rolling right on by now.

Anyway. Here's wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and/or a generally wonderful holiday season!

I don't have any extra time off work this year -- just the weekend, which I would have had off, anyway. But I am enjoying it. The holiday makes for a lovely excuse to just relax. I spent all morning in my pajamas finishing a book, which is thoroughly good for the soul. Tonight I'm going to make myself a nice dinner, and then I'm going to follow my usual impatient custom of opening all my presents at midnight. Tomorrow I'm probably going to get together with some people from work who are also hanging around town for the holiday and don't have family here, and we're going to play some board games. Can't stay too late, though, because of course there'll be new Doctor Who tomorrow evening. It would hardly be Christmas without Doctor Who! Even if I still can't quite believe I now live in a world where I get new Doctor Who as a present every Christmas.

I hope everyone everyone reading is having at least as nice a time as I am, however you're spending these days. And, hey, we're almost ready to be done with 2016!

Belated December Currentlies

This is way later in the month than I usually do this. I'm not dead, I promise! I just seem to have had very little time for anything lately. I've been working long hours, and when I'm not working, I'm trying to catch up on the giant to-do list of things that have that piled up while I was working, or else I'm completely out of energy because I've been spending all day running around trying to catch up on the to-do list.

Current clothes: Gray sweatpants. A t-shirt that says, "Screw reality, I'm going to the bookstore," which might just be my new official motto. White socks.

Current mood: Somewhat better, as it's a relief to finally get some time off. But also kind of tired. From, y'know, running around all day trying to catch up on the to-do list.

Current music: Nothing at the moment, really.

Current annoyance: There are many, but primarily the aforementioned lack of time. Including the fact that I woke up today determined to Do All The Things, and instead have only done a few of the things, because most of the things seem to have taken at least twice as long as they ought to have. Sigh.

Current thing: I just listened to the entire backlog of the Lexicon Valley podcast -- about a hundred episodes -- in the course of, I dunno, maybe about three weeks. Except for the most recent episode, which I turned off because it was going to have spoilers for a movie I haven't seen yet.

Current desktop picture: Still this lovely bookish image.

Current book: Clockwork Angels by Kevin J. Anderson, which is sort of a novelization of the Rush album of the same name. It's... not good.

Current song in head: Well, snippets of Rush songs keep popping in there, because Mr. Anderson thinks he's incredibly clever for constantly working them awkwardly into his prose. But otherwise, not much.

Current refreshment: Some kind of zero-calorie sparkling orange-mango drink.

Current DVD in player: Disc 2 of season 2 of Broadchurch. Which I have heard argued did not need a second season, but I'm liking it so far.

Current happy thing: Man, it is nice to finally have a proper weekend. A three-day weekend, even! Also, I finally have my thyroid medication again, so that's nice.

Current thought: I'm sure I had something profound to say here, but it's completely gone out of my head. So, um... Happy holidays?

Feel Free To Insert Your Own The Exorcist Projectile Vomiting Reference Here.

Annnnd, so, as if to punish me for daring to try to find things to be thankful for in this year of constant, worldwide crap, I came down with an industrial-strength case of post-Thanksgiving food poisoning last night. Although I'm honestly not sure whether it was me uncharacteristically cutting a food safety corner or two when cooking my meal, or something to do with the tacos I ate for lunch yesterday. (I did think a couple of bites of those tasted off.) Apparently incubation times vary.

Anyway. I'll spare you the details, if only because recounting them is likely to make me want to hurl all over again. I'll just say that it was UNBELIEVABLY AWFUL. At least the vomiting part only lasted a few hours, though. Long, awful hours, but still. I'm still feeling kind of shaky and sick now, though. But at this rate, hopefully I'll be up and around and eating some kind of solid food by tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Marking The Occasion

I'd like to wish a very happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends, and to express the hope that all of you may find you have many things to be glad about this year.

Belated November Currentlies

Current clothes: Red sweatpants. A black t-shirt that says "I may look lazy, but on a molecular level, I'm quite busy." Black socks.

Current mood: I won't lie, it ain't been good. Everything from global-scale events down the the minutia of my own life seems to have been conspiring lately to make me feel upset and stressed, in a lot of different ways. I am at least feeling a little better today than I have been for the last few days, and I'm trying to hold onto that. But I am still very much feeling that strange sense of unreality, of having somehow ended up on the wrong timeline. It's almost exactly how I felt the time I rolled my pickup truck on the highway. I just sat there afterward convinced that there had been some mistake, that that couldn't possibly have just happened, and that at any moment some cosmic editing process would kick in and put reality back to what it was supposed to be. Except that wore off after a few minutes. I suspect this time it's going to take a lot longer.

Current music: Leonard Cohen's You Want It Darker. Which I didn't even realize was out, until I read about it in his obituary. Speaking of things that upset me.

Current annoyance: The whole damn world, at this point. But, more particularly, if more pettily... I've taken this week off of work, something I arranged several weeks ago. I needed to burn some use-or-lose vacation time, had some things I needed to get done around the house and such, and felt like I desperately needed some time to de-stress, having not had a real vacation in over a year. Well, the list of things needing to be done has kept growing in both magnitude and importance, and the de-stressing thing now feels like a bitter joke.

Current thing: Disillusionment. Also, the never-ending quest to prevent rainwater from coming into my house. (This time, the problem was sagging gutters.)

Current desktop picture: I finally replaced Death and his kitty with the old book image I used to use. Don't know how long I'll keep this one, though. I like it a lot, but I don't know that I'm in the mood for it.

Current book: Excession by Iain M. Banks. I generally like Banks's Culture books, but I'm feeling a little impatient with this one. It's got fun world-building (as usual), and what looks to be an interesting plot hook, but I'm 200 pages in, and so far it feels like it's all endless setup and no actual story.

Current song in head: Some incidental music from the video game Don't Starve, which I was just playing a little while ago.

Current refreshment: Nothing, but I need some breakfast.

Current DVD in player: I've been trying (with only partial success) to catch up on stuff on my DVR lately, so no DVDs at the moment. I think the most recent one was Captain America: Civil War. Which was... OK.

Current happy thing: Wellll.... OK, not having to work is good, even if I do want to pout about it not being quite the relaxing/productive break I had planned. And tomorrow is the $5-a-bag library book sale in Albuquerque.

Current thought: They say we get the government we deserve. Apparently we're a nation of assholes. In retrospect, I don't know why that surprised me.

Wait... What?

What I want to know is, what freaky-ass alternate timeline have I just landed in, and, for the love of all that's sane, how do I get back to a reasonable reality?

What the fuck, America? Just... What. The. Fuck.

Don't Blame Me. I Voted.

New Mexico starts early voting in mid-October, so I have now done my duty and cast my ballot. That means the election can be over now, at least for me, right? Right?

October Currentlies

Current clothes: A brown t-shirt with a picture of a groggy-looking owl holding a cup of coffee. (It seemed appropriate today.) Sweatpants in a mossy green color. White socks.

Current mood: Mostly okay, but with some lingering feelings of annoyance from yesterday (although some nice relaxing time today has enabled those to fade some) and a certain amount of tiredness. I stayed up late last night because I have to switch onto night shifts for the weekend, but then I woke up early, anyway, which is very non-ideal.

Current music: Some forgettable random-shuffle stuff on the iPod.

Current annoyance: Well, there's having finally hit the last straw with the people at my doctor's office. But also the fact that my work hours are starting to really get to me, and I am coming to the conclusion that I really need some time off.

Current thing: Wondering where the hell the time goes. Lately, things that happen monthly seem to be taking place approximately once a week. I know time speeds up as you get older, but I can't be that old yet, can I?

Current desktop picture: Still Death and one of his cats.

Current book: The Passage by Justin Cronin. Which isn't bad, I guess, but I don't know that it's exactly good, either.

Current song in head: Right this minute, "The Boxer" by Carbon Leaf, but give it ten minutes and it'll probably change.

Current refreshment: Nothing.

Current DVD in player: Disk one of season four of Community.

Current happy thing: Well, I've heard that my people in Florida are all fine after the hurricane, as well as their property, so that's good. And while I'm talking about weather, there's also the fact that here in New Mexico we've hit that all-too-brief time of year when it's neither too hot nor too cold, and that's always lovely.

Current thought: I really should take some time off. Especially as I think I'm actually close to my vacation rollover maximum, and the year is zipping by at near light speed.

And Just To Put My Stupid Problems Into Perspective

I've been looking at weather forecasts for Florida, and that is one scary-ass hurricane. I have family members on the Florida coast who've had to evacuate, and am very glad to know they're safe on higher ground. Here's hoping their house comes through okay, as well.

Good luck, Floridians. Stay safe.

What The Hell Does Somebody Have To Do To Get Some Goddamned Levothyroxin Around Here?

Anybody have any recommendations for doctors in Socorro or Albuquerque? (Or somewhere in-between?) I think I've just hit the absolute last straw with Socorro General Medical Group and their incompetent administrative staff. Which, admittedly, I should have done after the time my doctor told them three weeks in advance that she wanted to reschedule my surgery, and they didn't bother calling me until a few days beforehand. (At which point my boss already had every one on an altered work schedule to accommodate my absence, and my mother was packing to fly out to stay with me.) Then, of course, there was the time they submitted the wrong version of a fantastically expensive and time-sensitive drug and ignored my insurance company's repeated attempts to check whether that was what they really wanted. Or the multiple times they sent me repeat prescriptions for drugs I was only supposed to take once. Or the time they made me an appointment with a nurse after I insisted, several times, that I wanted to see an actual doctor. Or... Well, yeah, you get the idea.

Today's saga, just because I have to vent about it somewhere:

Over the weekend I noticed I was low on my thyroid pills and submitted a refill request to Wallmart (which is now the only pharmacy in town, something that comes with its own share of suck, but never mind that now). There's a note that they have to confirm the refill with my doctor, which might take an extra day. They're supposed to text me when it's ready, but for the next three days, I hear nothing. When I check, the automated phone menu and website say the refill order doesn't exist. I try putting it in again. Nothing. I call back today to check it again, and the computer tells me the pharmacy wants to speak with me. They tell me the refill has been refused by my doctor.

I call the doctors' office. The woman I talk to -- who sounds like she has no idea what she's doing, and ums and ers and reads things aloud to herself under her breath like she's trying hard to understand them and immediately has to go and "ask the nurse" about something -- tells me the refill was refused because it's been more than six months since I had my thyroid levels checked. It has been five and a half months, but OK, it's reasonable that they might not want to order the refill until it's been checked again. Now, the doctor whose name is on the prescription isn't there any more; she left a few months ago. This is all too familiar, as this practice has a constant revolving door of physicians (which is another strike against it). I'm told that one of the new doctors will have to see me before they can order blood tests or refill my pills. Which is also reasonable; doctors don't want to order tests or drugs for people they haven't seen in person. But the problem is that because they never bothered to inform me of this when they got the refill request four days ago, I am now out of pills. I just took my last one.

Now, when they do the blood test, what they're testing is whether the medication is working properly, or whether the dosage needs to be adjusted. If the levels are where they should be when I'm on the medication, it's fine. If they're off, we probably need to change it. But that only works if you do the test when I've been taking the pills. So, after the woman offers me an appointment on Monday so we can do the blood test sometime later, I explain to her why this is a problem, and ask her if the doctor is aware that I'm out of pills. She just repeats that she's going to make me an appointment for Monday and the policy is that I can't get a blood test or the pills until then. Yes, I say, but is a doctor aware that this is going to be a problem? Can she talk to them and see what they have to say about it? She can't talk to them, she says. They're all in rooms with patients. OK, can she talk to them when they have a free moment and maybe give me a call back? No, she's not going to do that. She will make me an appointment for Monday. Yes, I say, but the doctor really should be aware of this. Does the doctor know I'm out of medication? She assumes the doctors know, she says. They probably aren't going to do anything differently. (Although, in my experience, the doctors themselves are generally very good at being flexible and accommodating, and, in any case, they should be warned about the problem.) "Probably," I say. "You assume. That means you don't know. Can you check?" No, she's not going to do that. This is the policy. I sigh and ask if there is someone else I can speak to. "Yes," she says, "But they're just going to tell you the same thing."

She transfers me. I explain the situation again, and about the other person's refusal to help. Oh, yes, says the new person, they can absolutely check with a doctor when one is free, and will give me call back before noon.

Someone calls me back before noon and says that, actually, one of the doctors has a free slot this afternoon, and I can come in at 2:45 so she can see me so I can get the blood test. Hooray!

An hour later, someone else calls me, and tells me that one of the doctors is putting in a 60-day refill order for me, and I just have to make sure to make an appointment before the pills run out. "Great! I say. Um, does that mean I shouldn't come to the appointment today?" The guy sounds befuddled. "They made you an appointment?" He checks. Turns out, the person they made the appointment with doesn't even take my insurance. So, yeah, let's cancel that. I should just make an appointment later, he says. I tell him, uh, I think I may actually want to see a different doctor, instead, and ask about what I need to do to transfer my medical records. So now, I guess, I need to find a new doctor in the next 60 days.

And, man, I really, really hope they actually send that prescription in. I won't be remotely surprised if they don't.

Always "Getting Ready," Never Actually There

Why is it that lately I seem to be spending half my life waiting for Windows to update?  And is it ever going to decide it's finally up-to-date enough? These are the burning questions in my mind as I watch my laptop reboot itself for the umpteenth time.

As for its promises to take care of business during an "inactive time," I can only laugh. Windows, I guarantee you're not smart enough to figure out when I'm likely to be awake and wanting my computer. Even I am barely smart enough for that.

You Can't Take The Quiz From Me.

This week's geeky social activity: the Geeks Who Drink Firefly theme quiz, which was held in Albuquerque last night. (Well, and also in lots of other cities, but I didn't go to those.) We came in third! Which didn't win us anything, but it was not too shabby at all, considering there must have been thirty teams, and that the winners reportedly only missed two questions all night. Now, those are some big damn heroes!

Win or lose, it was an entertaining evening, and a good excuse for a re-watch, something I hadn't done in years. Of course, now I'm annoyed at Fox for cancelling the show all over again. Some grudges truly never die...

Still Trekkin'

After my post on Star Trek the other day, someone linked me to this piece of music, which combines the theme songs from the original series, TNG, DS9, and Voyager into one amazing whole, and I thought it was just too great not to share:

Keep On Trekkin'

I could not possibly let today pass without wishing a happy 50th Anniversary to Star Trek. Who would ever have predicted, back in the day, that a show that had trouble even staying on the air for three years would still be something we'd be talking about half a century later? Let alone that it would have such a tremendous influence on science fiction, on pop culture, on millions of people, and even on real-world technology?

I sometimes like to describe myself, only half-jokingly, as a lapsed Trekkie. There was a point -- OK, it was pretty much the entirety of my teens -- when Star Trek, with its humanist philosophy and its much-discussed optimistic view of the future, served me pretty effectively in place of a religion. These days, Trek and I have drifted apart a little bit. I've found myself disappointed with some of the later entries in the franchise, eventually giving up entirely on both Voyager and Enterprise. And I can see problems with the original series that weren't remotely obvious to me as a youngster, from the disturbing implications of Kirk's interpretation of the Prime Directive as something that only applies to societies he approves of, to its unexamined 1960s sexism.

And yet. And yet, I still maintain a deep, abiding, nostalgic affection for Kirk and company, and (in a somewhat different way) for their Next Generation descendants. Not to mention a strong appreciation for the tragically under-rated Deep Space 9, which, despite a rough first season and the occasional plot or character misstep, was and remains a damned good show.

I may not think about Star Trek obsessively the way I did when I was, oh, thirteen. And I'm pretty sure I've forgotten more Trek trivia than even Gene Roddenberry ever knew. But the swelling notes of that classic theme song can still stir my heart, and the role Trek had in shaping my life really cannot be underestimated. I feel like I should feel embarrassed by that, somehow. But I'm not. If nothing else, I'll always love Star Trek for giving me Mr. Spock as someone a lonely little nerdy kid to look up to and adopt as a role model, as he was for so many nerdy little kids like me.

Live long and prosper, Trek. Not that you need the encouragement from me. Whatever I might think about all the twists and turns you've taken over the years, you seem to be managing that just fine.

I'm Still Here! And It's September Now, So Have Another Iteration Of The Usual Meme

Apparently I haven't posted anything since I did this meme in August. Well... That's August for you, really. It's just one long month of nothing. Anyway, here's the state of things in September:

Current clothes: My wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey Doctor Who t-shirt. Blue shorts. White ankle socks. Black leather work boots that really need to be polished. Or even just cleaned, really.

Current mood: Not too bad. Kind of sleepy. I think the shift work has been kicking my ass more than usual of late.

Current music: Nothing much at the moment. Boring, I know.

Current annoyance: The pump on my swamp cooler seems to be having problems, and there are just enough too-warm days left in the season for me to want to do without it.

Current thing: I've been playing a lot of Don't Starve. Which is a fun game, and rather addictive, but also a bit frustrating. I think I may give it a rest for now. My little guy managed to survive for 66 days on my last attempt, and I'm not sure I can face the thought of doing all that all over again just yet.

Current desktop picture: Still Discworld's Death and one of his kitties.

Current book: In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith. It's number six in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, which I came to late, but am enjoying. I'm making my way through it slowly and intermittently, though, as I fear the books could lose their charm if not spaced out enough.

Current song in head: Snippets of some obscure song about Charles Darwin that I'm feeling far too lazy to look up the title and artist of.

Current refreshment: Mango passion fruit tea.

Current DVD in player: I'm just about to start the last disc of season 1 of Broadchurch. I'd been meaning to get to this one for a while, but bumped it up the queue when Chris Chibnall was tapped to take over Doctor Who after Seven Moffat leaves, since I've found his writing work on Who kind of forgettable but wanted to see what he could do as a showrunner. I must say, I've been surprisingly impressed by it.

Current happy thing: I'm still happy to finally have my driveway work completely done. All the more so since they finally showed up to seal the cracks in my little concrete porch area, which was the last thing waiting to be done. (Well, the last thing on that job, anyway.)

Current thought: I probably shouldn't have eaten quite so many tacos before sitting down to write this.

August Currentlies

Because it is August.

Current clothes: Black ankle socks. Khaki shorts. A black t-shirt that says, "I spend my life crushed beneath my TBR pile." For you non-biblioholics, "TBR" stands for "To Be Read," and what the shirt says is true. I spend my life crushed beneath my TBR pile metaphorically, and I will not be entirely surprised if I end my life crushed beneath it literally.

Current mood: OK. Lately I've kind of been in that state where I find it hard not to stress out about all kinds of stupid stuff -- I'm mostly blaming the disruption of the driveway work this time -- but I think I'm feeling slightly more relaxed today. We'll see if it lasts.

Current music: Nothing notable. I don't remember what the iPod last served me when I random-shuffled it.

Current annoyance: So many. So. Many. But if I have to pick one, let's go with having actual humidity in the air. I am not used to this, and I don't like it. Sweat should evaporate immediately, not hang around soaking through your clothes! Plus, the A/C in my house is evaporative cooling, which means that when we get days that are both hot and humid, I'm pretty much screwed.

Current thing: Trying to get big home improvement projects done. Buying too many books. Also, fictional skeletons. I don't understand that last one, either.

Current desktop picture: In honor of my current thing, and my ongoing re-reading of Terry Pratchett, I have finally replaced my favorite Time Lord with this awesome artwork featuring Death and a kitty cat.

Current book: I just finished The World in Flames, a memoir about growing up in a doomsday cult. Next up is Pratchett's Thief of Time.

Current song in head: Songs have been flitting in and out of my head like crazy lately. This morning I woke up with "Bad Reputation" by Joan Jett in my brain. I have no idea what that means; it didn't have anything at all to do with anything I was dreaming about.

Current refreshment: Nothing. But I'm kind of thirsty.

Current DVD in player: Just finished disc 1 of season one of The Expanse (meaning I've seen up through episode three). In principle, I like the idea of this show a lot. This kind of solar-system-based hard(ish) SF thing has never really been done on TV, and I feel like the medium is probably ripe for it. In practice, though, I'm having trouble getting interested in it. The characters and the plot are kind of generic-feeling, and some of the worldbuilding stuff seems over-exposited to me while other stuff is a little hard to follow. But I've been warned that it starts out this way, and assured by at least a couple of people that it eventually gets more engaging. And so far I'm liking it at least a little better with each episode, which is encouraging. I am curious to see what they do with it.

Current happy thing: Even if there has been a lot of stressful stuff around it, I do have a new driveway! Yay! That so, so needed to be done.

Current thought: Ummmm.... Hang on... I'm sure I can come up with one...

Parking On The Driveway (Not Driving On The Parkway)

Since I was asked to post a picture of the new driveway, here is a picture of the new driveway!

Unfortunately, it has been rainy and muddy here, and it thus did not stay pretty and pristine for long. But, look! No cracks! No grass growing in the middle! Now if they'd just repave the road in front of it...



(Hopefully this time the picture will work.)

A Pretty Big Pile Of Concrete

Well, the work on my driveway has finally started. Of course, in true Murphy's Law fashion, it got delayed long enough to happen just as I'm about to go back onto night shifts. Sigh. But I'm very, very glad it's finally getting done. And I'll be even gladder when it's finished and I can mark it down as one less thing to worry about.

Here's what has become of my old driveway:



[ETA: Apparently the photo wasn't showing up for anyone but me, because Google Photos does really annoying, non-obvious things with permissions. Sigh. I miss Picasa. Anyway, it should be visible to the world now. Right? Right?]

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

I still don't have a new driveway -- apparently there were some delays, and the most recent word I heard was that maybe they'll be here Monday or Tuesday -- but I do have a new mattress.

And, man, mattress shopping got weird since the last time I had to think about it. (Not that I thought about it very much, then. It was basically: I need a bed, this affordable bed frame/mattress/box spring/headboard combination at the local furniture store seems fine, end of shopping.) It used to be a mattress was a big rectangle full of springs, and all you had to do was pick one that seemed to have the right firmness, but while I wasn't paying much attention there was, like, this bewildering explosion in mattress technology.

Anyway. I got a traditional spring one with a cushiony pillow top on it. Which, after sleeping on it for a couple of nights, I am thinking may not have been the ideal choice. The top is foam, and while I'd heard foam beds retain a lot of heat, I figured one layer of it, which supposedly also features some kind of gel to help keep it cool, would be okay. I can definitely feel the difference in how warm it is, though. It'll be great for winter, but is less than ideal in July, when we haven't had a day that hasn't hit triple digits in over a week. Still, if I replace my comforter with a lighter blanket, I think I'll be fine. (I can't sleep without some kind of a blanket. I feel too exposed, or something.) It's also waaaaaay thicker than my old mattress, which is going to take some getting used to, if only because it means I have to adjust my aim when groping for my glasses on the headboard shelf in the morning.

Unfortunately, I'm also not sure it's helping with the fact that my back often tends to feel a bit stiff or achy when I wake up, which was kind of the point of the exercise. (Although, honestly, the old one did need to be replaced, regardless. It was 15 years old, and becoming noticeably concave.) Likely said stiffness has more to do with my poor posture during the day than it does with my sleeping position. (The ergonomics at work aren't bad, but I have noticed I tend to slump a lot when sitting in front of the computer at home. And I do a lot of sitting in front of the computer at home.) I'm also a little worried, though, that in my paranoia about ending up with a mattress that's too firm -- hard mattresses being the source of some unbelievably miserable nights I've spend on hotel beds -- I might have ended up with one that's just a little too soft. Sigh. How on Earth can the human body possibly be so sensitive to such things? Didn't we evolve to sleep on beds of leaves or something?

Tired But Happy

The Night Vale show, predictably, was super awesome. Although it's a weirdly strange experience when what you're used to experiencing as a disembodied voice on a podcast is coming out of an actual human being standing in front of you.

Now I think I'm going to take a bath with some of the expensive bubble bath my mother sent me for my birthday. All in all, not a bad day. Not a bad day, at all.

Another Spin 'Round The Sun

Happy birthday to me! I am 45 today, which... Well, I shall not dwell upon that too much, I guess, except to be glad to have made it this far.

Mostly, I am busy feeling excited about going to the Welcome to Night Vale live show tonight! Although it's also maybe a little bit awkward, because people -- mostly my relatives -- keep asking me what I'm doing for my birthday, and I keep saying, "Oh, I'm going to Albuquerque and seeing a show," and then they ask me what it is, and then I have to try and explain what Night Vale is, and... Yeah, good luck with that.

But! It is going to be very awesome, and I am super-psyched about it.

Now, if I can just finally get my driveway done, it will be a terrific week all the way around. (I was told it would be in the morning, one day this week. Given that the week is slowly running out of mornings, I am beginning to get nervous. But, eh. It'll happen! And that will be one less giant thing hanging around for me to worry about. Which will be an excellent present, so, yay!)

Space Stuff

Also an eensy bit belated, but hearty congratulations to the Juno team, who are all set now to do some really awesome science at Jupiter. Let us know if you find any monoliths, guys!

July Currentlies

Happy belated Independence Day to my fellow Americans! And congratulations to us, I guess, for managing that e pluribus unum thing more successfully than our parent country. Ahem.

Right. Time for the currentlies!

Current clothes: Blue shorts. A Doctor Who t-shirt with the 10th Doctor's (in)famous "big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff" quote on it. White socks.

Current mood: Pretty good. Got lots of sleep today.

Current music: Nothing much.

Current annoyance: They told me "some time in early July," and it's early July now, but I'm still not sure exactly when the contractors are going to be here to do my driveway. Which is understandable, and probably not a big deal. My boss even very kindly re-arranged the schedule so I'm not on night shifts next week, so I'm not faced with the possibility of trying to sleep while people are using jackhammers outside my house. (Unless they end up doing it later in the month, I guess, on the Monday after my night-shift weekend, but that'd probably be more deal-withable, anyway.) But I get really, really antsy when I can't get things pinned down so I can make plans.

Current thing: So, I did finish playing Undertale again, and got my happy ending reward for not killing people. You can also get a very different kind of play-through if, instead, you kill everybody, but there was no way I was going to do that, partly because I didn't want to go through it again, but mostly because of the overwhelming guilt. So I found a YouTube video that'd show me what happens if you do that... and the game still managed to make me feel like a terrible person, just for watching it. Well played, game. Well, played. Anyway. That was definitely worth the ten bucks I paid for it on Steam, because even being done with it, thoughts and feelings about it seem to be lingering in my head and bouncing off each other in interesting ways. Arguably, when you play it as a pacifist, its response is a little too preachy and saccharine, but overall it's a well-aimed commentary on the largely unexamined way that games expect you to progress through violence. And when you put the various possible paths together, there's some fascinatingly meta stuff going on. Also, it has funny skeletons.

Current desktop picture: Still the same 12th Doctor wallpaper.

Current book: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. A good (if perhaps slightly over-hyped) book about a super-depressing subject.

Current song in head: Some of the stupidly catching music from Undertale.

Current refreshment: Nothing, but it's gonna have to be lunchtime soon.

Current DVD in player: I just finished disk 3 of season 2 of Community. Which is slightly weirder than season 1. I am not complaining about this. Truth is, despite the occasional musing about whether perhaps our popular culture is spending a little too much time gazing into its own navel, I actually do love the meta. (With or without funny skeletons.)

Current happy thing: I've been taking a little extra time to relax lately. It is good for the soul.

Current thought: Speaking of funny skeletons, I think I'm going back to the Discworld Death novels next. Hmm. Come to think of it, Discworld is also pretty meta. There seem to be some strange, strange patterns in my media consumption at the moment...

Some Reactions To Some Entertainments

In the interest of actually updating once in a while, here's some media stuff I'm currently/recently into, and the slightly odd thought's I've been having about them:

I've been playing Undertale, the adorable game designed to make you feel like human garbage. (Why is it so hard not to kill things? WHY??!) I actually finished it once, but have started over again trying to do things differently, which apparently is what the game expects you to do if you actually want to not feel like human garbage. I cannot remotely decide whether this is brilliant and thematically deep, or just emotionally sadistic. Probably both.

I just finished watching The Wire, which does, indeed, live up to its reputation as a landmark piece of TV drama. And leaves one at the end with the impression that perhaps everyone is human garbage, made so by a crushing and inescapable human-garbage-producing system. (Well, all of us except maybe that one newspaper guy, anyway. And Bubbles, who is so darned likeable one can forgive him anything.) Honestly, I was eager to finally get through this show for sheer cultural literacy purposes, but now that I'm finished with it, I miss it already.

I've also been watching Community, which, mercifully, does not make me feel like human garbage, but which does make me wonder: How is it that tired, annoying sitcom plot points and cheesy, annoying sitcom morals-of-the-story suddenly become entertaining again if the show in question acknowledges, tacitly or explicitly, that that's what it's doing? I swear, part of me, watching this thing, is appreciating the show's ironic approach in a way that is itself ironic (because ironic meta is soooo last decade, amirite?), and it is at about this point that I start to wonder if our culture is about to disappear up its own navel, and whether that's a good thing or a bad thing or what. Eh, whatever. It make for an enjoyable half-hour of television, anyway.

New Mexico In June: It Makes You Not Want To Be In New Mexico In June

I still aten't dead. I've just 1) not had anything particularly interesting to say, and 2) not had lots of motivation or energy for blogging, or for much of anything else, for that matter. We've reached that inevitable stretch of triple-digit days here, the ones that leave you with the disturbing feeling that the sun is actively trying to kill you, and that rob you of your will to live, or at least of your will to do anything other than crank up the struggling A/C -- the swamp cooler can make it livable in my house, under conditions like these, but can't actually get it all the way to cool -- and lie on the sofa with a cold drink and a book. I have a to-do list as long as my arm, and I'm really hoping to get at least some of it done on my days off this week, but I don't think most of it is happening. The yard work, which would have to involve getting up very early to get it finished while the yard is still capable of sustaining human life, is almost certainly not going to get done. No matter how tall the weeds are getting.

Of course, summer is also fire season here. I've already had one person who saw a story about fires in the southwest on the national news ask me about it, so, for the record, no, I'm not on fire, or in any obvious immediate danger of catching on fire. The Dog Head fire, which is the big fire you may have heard about, is considerably north of me. We have had one only a few miles away, though, which I did find a little too close for comfort. The giant, dark plume of smoke visible from here the first day that one was burning was certainly unpleasant to look at, not least because it covered a surprising amount of the northern horizon. It did destroy a couple of houses and some other buildings, which is awful. But I don't think it was in any real danger of coming this way, so the most I personally suffered was some lung irritation from the smoke.

Honestly, fires are pretty much a fact of life in this part of the country at this time of the year. There's at least one right now that's being allowed to burn for the sake of the ecosystem, which evolved to expect a fire from time to time. It's when they encroach on human habitation that they make the news. And the Dog Head has done some terrible encroaching -- well, a couple dozen houses, but that's beyond terrible, if one of them happens to be yours. I think they have the worst of it under control now, though.

Anyway. That's the status of things at the moment: I myself am fine, albeit lethargic, but the state I live in basically feels like some cruel child-god is holding a giant magnifying between us and the sun. But monsoon season should be here in earnest any minute. Admittedly, probably just in time to prevent my driveway work from being done, if my luck holds true. But given the state of things, I'm not sure I could even bring myself to complain.

I Aten't Dead! Have Some June Currentlies.

Current clothes: A bathrobe. I just got out of the shower. Once I'm finished posting this, I'm going to go and put on... I dunno. Jeans and a t-shirt, like usual.

Current mood: Not bad. A little slow-moving, in that heavy, slept-too-much kind of way. Which I've been doing a lot, lately. Maybe it's the summer weather. Sometimes my body just seems to decide it wants to estivate. Not that I'm complaining (or at least not much). Too much sleep is better than too little, especially when I'm on night shifts.

Current music: Nothing, really.

Current annoyance: The company that's going to redo my driveway has been taking a while to figure out exactly when they're going to be able to schedule the work. They just got back to me with "sometime in early July, exact date TBA." I hope they don't end up wanting to do it the week I'm on nights. Or that they'll at least let me know soon enough that I can arrange for someone to cover for me. I really don't want to work all night and come home to the sound of jackhammers outside my window.

Current thing: I guess I have a couple of current things, other than sleep. I've started re-reading some of Pratchett's Discworld books, in between all the other books I have to read. Starting with the Death novels, because Death is awesome. The character, that is, of course, not the phenomenon. I'm also back on a little bit of a making-household-improvements kick. I've finally replaced a bunch of window screens that were shredded nearly to uselessness by time and cats, for example. Which is good, even if I am a bit annoyed with myself for accidentally ordering the wrong color frames.

Current desktop picture: It's still the same Doctor Who picture I've had for ages now. I should probably stop pretending to myself I have any desire to change it.

Current book: Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold. Which is pleasant enough, I guess, but kind of dull. Never thought I'd say that about this particular series.

Current song in head: Billy Joel's "For the Longest Time," ever since a few days ago, when I stumbled across this parody on the subject of entropy.

Current refreshment: Nothing. But I'm thirsty. And maybe a little hungry.

Current DVD in player: I just finished season 4 of The Wire. Which was amazing.

Current happy thing: Looking at my work schedule for tonight, it looks like, unless something goes horribly wrong (which is always possible), it should be a nice, quiet night. I am very much in favor of nice, quiet nights.

Current thought: Between the window screens and the driveway, my next household improvement project is going to have to be shopping for mattresses. Since it finally occurred to me that part of the reason why I wake up with an achy back far too often probably has to do with the fact that my mattress is 16 years old and saggy. This, I am not looking forward to.

This Is A Test. This Is Only A Test.

Nothing to see here, just me testing the Blogger app I installed on my phone, because trying to use the Blogger website on a phone is ridiculously awkward and difficult, and it finally occurred to me that, duh, of course there's an app that's actually designed to be used on a phone. (Not that I update from the phone often, anyway, but, hey, when you went to, you want to.)

Anyway, This seems way easier. Yay.

I May Have Some Currentlies

Current clothes: Olive green sweat pants. My Doctor Who wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey t-shirt. White socks. Black leather boots.

Current mood: Not bad. Today has been that combination of relaxing and productive I most like to achieve on the weekends, marred slightly by the fact that my days off just seem to slip by faster and faster, and today has not been an exception.

Current music: I was just listening to random-shuffle stuff on the iPod while doing some housecleaning. Last song was something by the Goo-Goo Dolls.

Current annoyance: That thing about my time to myself going by too fast. Slow down for a sec, time! I have things I want to do with you! (Stupid wibbly-wobbly stuff. Sigh.)

Current thing: Some of that time (OK, probably too much of that time) slipped past while I was playing Slither. That game is stupidly addictive, I think mostly because it's one of those games where every time you lose -- and you will always, always lose - it feels as if you almost didn't, and all you have to do next time is not make that one stupid mistake, or be just a little bit faster... It's so hard not to just click "play again" to attempt to prove it.

Current desktop picture: Still the same Doctor Who one I've had for ages. I really, really should change that. Will it happen before I do this again next month? Probably not.

Current book: Pretender by C. J. Cherryh, book 8 in her Foreigner series. Someday, in the distant future, I will actually make it through all of this series.

Current song in head: "Temporary One" by Fleetwood Mac, which came up on random shuffle yesterday, and has been playing in my head ever since.

Current refreshment: Diet cream soda.

Current DVD in player: Crimson Peak. Which, like all of Guillermo del Toro's movies, is extremely visually impressive (albeit a bit gory in places), but, like most of his movies, I'm not sure how impressive it is or isn't in other respects. It's got its good points, but... Well, if it's a bit slow, a bit stilted, and more than a bit ridiculous, is that a flaw, or is it just really, really good at capturing the sensibility of the Victorian Gothic stories it's paying homage to? I honestly can't tell.

Current happy thing: No work today! And later I will have pot roast. Mmm, pot roast.

Current thought: Happy Mother's Day to all you motherly types out there (at least in places where it's celebrated today). Me, I'm going to continue spending today reveling in the inestimable joy of not having kids.

Game Of Spoilers: Or, I Would Rather Know Nothing About Jon Snow

I just finished watching season 5 of Game of Thrones on DVD. (And was surprised by how caught up in it I got, too. The last couple of episodes, there was a lot of very loud yelling at certain characters.)

Of course, being just about exactly a season behind, that means I got to the end of season 5 just in time to be hit by an avalanche of season 6 spoilers, everywhere I turn online. Honestly, what is it with this show? I thought Doctor Who spoilers could be tricky to avoid if you waited too long, but GoT fans and critics seem to go out of their way to make sure nobody can miss them. Years later, I'm still shaking my head in bemusement about the article I saw on the prevalence of GoT spoilers that had a spoiler in the title.

I'm seriously beginning to suspect that HBO is planting this stuff somehow, in an attempt to get people like me to subscribe.

Oh, Look, It's May!

And thus endeth the exercise known as Blogs-A-Lot April. I'm never entirely sure if said exercise feels like it has all that much of a point, but one thing I did notice, this time, is that it sort of forced me to pay attention to every day as it passed, which means that, unlike a lot of months lately, April did not pass by in a blur, but seemed to take its time and to go by in something that felt at least a little more like a steady, regular way. And, honestly, if I was going to pick any month to do that, April seems like a good choice. Despite a few oddly chilly days this year, it is, for the most part, a brief, beautiful respite between the major New Mexican seasons of Too Cold and Too Hot, and it's good to enjoy that while it lasts.

Anyway. It being May, you will probably hear much less from me now. You may breathe a sigh of relief if you wish.